In general, a non-oxide structural material, such as SiC, BC or SiN, is a main element of ceramics having high strength, high hardness, high abrasion resistance, high oxidation resistance, and high corrosion resistance.
Since the non-oxide structural material shares a strong covalent bond due to its chemical property, it is very difficult to mold the non-oxide structural material through a sintering process. Therefore, the non-oxide structural material is generally formed by a hot press sintering method.
The hot press sintering method can make a sintered body of dense structure by simultaneously applying high heat and pressure to the preform. Such a device capable of carrying out the hot press sintering method is disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-Open No. 10-2007-0118866 (published on Dec. 18, 2007).
As illustrated in FIG. 1, a hot press sintering device 100 (referred to as a hot press) of the related art includes a base frame 110 for supplying the entire load of the device and easily transporting the device, a control unit 160 for controlling the whole operation of the device and displaying a current operating state of the device, a heating unit 120 having a space into which a sintering mold 150 for forming an object to be sintered is mounted, and supplying heat required for a sintering process to the object to be sintered under the control, the sintering mold 150 which is disposed in the heating unit and has a multiple-layers and -axes molding structure having a loading and molding space for the object to be sintered, and a pressing unit 140 of a multiple-axes structure for applying pressure to the sintering mold 150 to mold the object to be sintered with sufficient strength.
The above-described hot press sintering device 100 carries out the sintering process on the object to be formed by loading the object to be formed in the sintering mold 150 and heating the object to be formed using the heating unit 120, with the object being pressed by the pressing unit 140.
However, the hot press sintering device 100 of the related art has some problems in that since the base frame 110 is required to support the pressing unit 140, its structure is complicated, and thus a production cost is increased, and since the heat is easily released outwardly from the sintering mold 150, a lot of time is taken to heat the object to be formed, and a lot of heat loss happens.